Making cartoon... do I stay in Character Animator?

Report · Oct 30, 2024

I am making a cartoon for a 1st grade class based on a book they read. Each student drew their character and recorded their lines. They also drew backgrounds.

I am fairly inexperienced in both Character Animator Pro 2025 and After Effects which I haven't used in many years. I am wondering which application I should use for the main timelines. I can see how I could do it incharacter animator but I have a few characters that will not animate in a traditional fashion. For example there is a stapler which will move a giant mouth (being the base) up and down. Can someone give me a workflow of how I can use character animator to do the major characters and also do other animations such as the stapler?

Also, I am trying to use some of the premade characters to steal their eyes and mouth. When I bring them into Photoshop I can see all of the hierarchy of body parts. Elite sum and add my own as you can see in the attached picture. When I bring them back into character animator none of the triggers remain. For example, I would like to be able to switch between a mouth and an alt mouth but it won't let me. Any assistance would be very appreciated.

Report · Oct 31, 2024

Unfortunately, Character Animator is a finicky program. Sometimes everything has to be "just right" for it to respond like it's supposed to. In the case of copying parts, none of the rigging from the pre-made puppets is going to be copied via Photoshop. All of that will need to be added from scratch. I don't know what works best for the way you work, But if you can study the rigging in the premade puppet, you can manually duplicate it in the new puppet.

The stapler would work best with a nut-cracker jaw, or perhaps using the cycle animation behavior on the jaw rendered in several positions. It probably won't sync pefectly with the dialog, but it will look good enough to be convincing.

Report · Oct 31, 2024

Should I use after effects? Can I bring over characters animated in Character Animator and use them in aftereffects? Thanks!

Report · Oct 31, 2024

It is possible to take a scene that was animated in CH and open/edit it in AE. But it requires the scene to be complete in CH first. You cannot import a puppet from CH and expect AE to know what to do with the rigging. If you would rather start over in AE or even Adobe Animate, those are certainly options.